by Howard Zinn
real y use them to make the bold changes that are needed if we are to create a decent
society. We should take that gamble.
We are not starting from scratch. There is a long history in this country of rebel ion against
the establishment, of resistance to orthodoxy. There has always been a commonsense
perception that there are things seriously wrong and that we can't real y depend on those in
charge to set them right.
This perception has led Americans to protest and rebel. I think of the Boston Bread Rioters
and Carolina antitax farmers of the eighteenth century; the black and white abolitionists of
slavery days; the working people of the railroads, mines, textile mil s, steel mil s, and auto
plants who went on strike, facing the clubs of policemen and the machine guns of soldiers to
get an eight-hour workday and a living wage; the women who refused to stay in the kitchen
and marched and went to jail for equal rights; the black protesters and antiwar activists of
the 1960s; and the protesters against industrial pol ution and war preparations in the
1980s.
In the heat of such movements brains are set stirring with new ideas, which live on through
quieter times, waiting for another opportunity to ignite into action and change the world
around us.
Dissenters, I am aware, can create their own orthodoxy. So we need a constant
reexamination of our thinking, using the evidence of our eyes and ears and the realities of
our experience to think freshly. We need declarations of independence from al nations,
parties, and programs—al rigid dogmas.
The experience of our century tel s us that the old orthodoxies, the traditional ideologies,
the neatly tied bundles of ideas—capitalism, socialism, democracy—need to be untied, so
that we can play and experiment with al the ingredients, add others, and create new
combinations in looser bundles. We know as we come to the twenty-first century that we
desperately need to develop new, imaginative approaches to the human problems of our
time.
5
For citizens to do this on their own, to listen with some skepticism to the great thinkers and the experts, and to think for themselves about the great issues of today's world, is to make
democracy come alive.
We might begin by confronting one of those great thinkers, Niccoló Machiavel i, and
examining the connection between him and the makers of foreign policy in the United
States.
1 When Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, he clearly grasped this idea, one that
the giant American corporations had learned long ago; one did not have to monopolize the
field to maintain control and al owing for a bit of competition was the most ingenious way to
dominate. And so he initiated some socialist "pluralism."
2 Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, in their book Manufacturing Consent (South End
Press, 1989) argue powerful y that the function of the media in the United States (and, of
course, not only in the United States) "is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state."
They document this with examples of how the press treated certain historical events: the
Tet offensive during the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandals of the Nixon era, and the
Iran-Contra affair of the Reagan years.
3 Ched Noble, in a remarkable essay, "Ethics and Experts," Working Papers (July-Aug.
1980), rebels against the field in which she received her Ph.D. (philosophy), as she finds in
it a "new philosophical sub-discipline, applied ethics." She chal enges the assumption she finds in this new area, that "in order to think properly about moral issues … one needs a
background in classical moral theories and modern theory of value." While she does not
believe common sense alone can solve the profound moral problems, she insists that
"contemporary theoretical ethics cannot supply the deficiencies of common sense." She
resents the arrogance of philosophers "who believe that philosophy is the proper academic
discipline to assume responsibility for solving today's moral problems."
A similar view is expressed by a veteran philosopher, Bernard Wil iams, in his book Ethics
and the Limits of Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1986), who argues that philosophy
cannot do much to guide ethical actions.
4 John Le Carre, The Russia House (Knopf, 1989), 207.
5 The German scientist Werner Heisenberg became famous for, among other things, his
"principle of uncertainty," which makes this point. Heisenberg, in his book From Plato to Planck, said that "in science we are not dealing with nature itself but with the science of nature—that is, with nature which has been thought through and described by man."
Quoted in Paul Mattick, "Marxism and the New Physics," Philosophy of Science (Oct. 1962): 360.
6
Two
Machiavellian Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Means and
Ends
Interests: The Prince and the Citizen
About 500 years ago modern political thinking began. Its enticing surface was the idea of
"realism." Its ruthless center was the idea that with a worthwhile end one could justify any means. Its spokesman was Niccoló Machiavel i.
In the year 1498 Machiavel i became adviser on foreign and military affairs to the
government of Florence, one of the great Italian cities of that time. After fourteen years of
service, a change of government led to his dismissal, and he spent the rest of his life in
exile in the countryside outside of Florence. During that time he wrote, among other things,
a little book cal ed The Prince, which became the world's most famous handbook of political wisdom for governments and their advisers.
Four weeks before Machiavel i took office, something happened in Florence that made a
profound impression on him. It was a public hanging. The victim was a monk named
Savonarola, who preached that people could be guided by their "natural reason." This
threatened to diminish the importance of the Church fathers, who then showed their
importance by having Savonarola arrested. His hands were bound behind his back and he
was taken through the streets in the night, the crowds swinging lanterns near his face,
peering for the signs of his dangerousness.
Savonarola was interrogated and tortured for ten days. They wanted to extract a
confession, but he was stubborn. The Pope, who kept in touch with the torturers,
complained that they were not getting results quickly enough. Final y the right words came,
and Savonarola was sentenced to death. As his body swung in the air, boys from the
neighborhood stoned it. The corpse was set afire, and when the fire had done its work, the
ashes were strewn in the river Arno.1
In The Prince, Machiavel i refers to Savonarola and says, "Thus it comes about that al armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed."2
Political ideas are centered on the issue of ends (What kind of society do we want?) and
means (How wil we get it?). In that one sentence about unarmed prophets Machiavel i
settled for modern governments the question of ends: conquest. And the question of
means: force.
Machiavel i refused to be deflected by Utopian dreams or romantic hopes and by questions
of right and wrong or good and bad. He is the father of modern political realism, or what
has been cal ed realpoliti
k: "It appears to me more proper to go to the truth of the matter than to its imagination … for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that
he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, wil rather learn to bring about
his own ruin than his preservation."3
7
It is one of the most seductive ideas of our time. We hear on al sides the cry of "be realistic … you're living in the real world," from political platforms, in the press, and at
home. The insistence on building more nuclear weapons, when we already possess more
than enough to destroy the world, is based on "realism."4 The Wal Street Journal,
approving a Washington, D.C., ordinance al owing the police to arrest any person on the
street refusing to move on when ordered, wrote, "D.C.'s action is born of living in the real
world."5 And consider how often a parent (usual y a father) has said to a son or daughter:
"It's good to have idealistic visions of a better world, but you're living in the real world, so act accordingly."
How many times have the dreams of young people—the desire to help others; to devote
their lives to the sick or the poor; or to poetry, music, or drama—been demeaned as foolish
romanticism, impractical in a world where one must "make a living"? Indeed, the economic
system reinforces the same idea by rewarding those who spend their lives on "practical"
pursuits—while making life difficult for the artists, poets, nurses, teachers, and social
workers.
Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable notion that you should
base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning,
someone else's version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to
be skeptical of someone else's description of reality.
When Machiavel i claims to "go to the truth of the matter," he is making the frequent claim of important people (writers, political leaders) who press their ideas on others: that their
account is "the truth," that they are being "objective."
But his reality may not be our reality; his truth may not be our truth. The real world is
infinitely complex. Any description of it must be a partial description, so a choice is made
about what part of reality to describe, and behind that choice is often a definite interest, in the sense of something useful for a particular individual or group. Behind the claim of
someone giving us an objective picture of the real world is the assumption that we al have
the same interests, and so we can trust the one who describes the world for us, because
that person has our interests at heart.
It is very important to know if our interests are the same, because a description is never
simply neutral and innocent; it has consequences. No description is merely that. Every
description is in some way a prescription. If you describe human nature as Machiavel i does, as basical y immoral, it suggests that it is realistic, indeed only human, that you should
behave that way too.
The notion that al our interests are the same (the political leaders and the citizens, the
mil ionaire and the homeless person) deceives us. It is a deception useful to those who run
modern societies, where the support of the population is necessary for the smooth operation
of the machinery of everyday life and the perpetuation of the present arrangements of
wealth and power.
When the Founding Fathers of the United States wrote the Preamble to the Constitution,
their first words were, "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice …" The Constitution thus looked as if it were written by al the
people, representing their interests.
8
In fact, the Constitution was drawn up by fifty-five men, al white and mostly rich, who represented a certain elite group in the new nation. The document itself accepted slavery as
legitimate, and at that time about one of every five persons in the population was a black
slave. The conflicts between rich and poor and black and white, the dozens of riots and
rebel ions in the century before the Revolution, and a major uprising in western
Massachusetts just before the convening of the Constitutional Convention (Shays' Rebel ion)
were al covered over by the phrase "We the people."
Machiavel i did not pretend to a common interest. He talked about what "is necessary for a
prince."6 He dedicated The Prince to the rich and powerful Lorenzo di Medici, whose family ruled Florence and included popes and monarchs. (The Columbia Encyclopedia has this
intriguing description of the Medici: "The genealogy of the family is complicated by the
numerous il egitimate offspring and by the tendency of some of the members to dispose of
each other by assassination.")
In exile, writing his handbook of advice for the Medici, Machiavel i ached to be cal ed back to
the city to take his place in the inner circle. He wanted nothing more than to serve the
prince.
In our time we find greater hypocrisy. Our Machiavel is, our presidential advisers, our
assistants for national security, and our secretaries of state insist they serve "the national interest," "national security," and "national defense." These phrases put everyone in the country under one enormous blanket, camouflaging the differences between the interest of
those who run the government and the interest of the average citizen.
The American Declaration of Independence, however, clearly understood that difference of
interest between government and citizen. It says that the purpose of government is to
secure certain rights for its citizens—life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness. But
governments may not fulfil these purposes and so "whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to
institute new government."
The end. of Machiavel i's The Prince is clearly different. It is not the welfare of the citizenry, but national power, conquest, and control. Al is done in order "to maintain the state."7
In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom wal s, but
foreign policy fol ows Machiavel i. Our language is more deceptive than his; the purpose of
foreign policy, our leaders say, is to serve the "national interest," fulfil our "world responsibility." In 1986 General Wil iam Westmoreland said that during World War II the
United States "inherited the mantle of leadership of the free world" and "became the international champions of liberty."8 This, from the man who, as chief of military operations
in the Vietnam War, conducted a brutal campaign that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Vietnamese noncombatants.
Sometimes, the language is more direct, as when President Lyndon Johnson, speaking to
the nation during the Vietnam War, talked of the United States as being "number one." Or, when he said, "Make no mistake about it, we wil prevail."
Even more blunt was a 1980 article in the influential Foreign Affairs by Johns Hopkins
political scientist Robert W. Tucker; in regard to Central America, he wrote, "We have
regularly played a determining role in making and in unmaking governments, and we have
defined what we have considered to be the acceptable behavior of governments." Tucker
urged "a policy of a resurgent America to prevent the coming to power of radical regimes in
Central America" and asked, "Would a return to a policy of the past work in
Central
America? … There is no persuasive reason for believing it would not… . Right-wing
governments wil have to be given steady outside support, even, if necessary, by sending in
American forces."9
9
Tucker's suggestion became the Central America policy of the Reagan administration, as it came into office in early 1981. His "sending in American forces" was too drastic a step for an American public that clearly opposed another Vietnam (unless done on a smal scale, like
Reagan's invasion of Grenada, and Bush's invasion of Panama). But for the fol owing eight
years, the aims of the United States were clear: to overthrow the left-wing government of
Nicaragua and to keep in place the right-wing government of El Salvador.
Two Americans who visited El Salvador in 1983 for the New York City Bar Association,
described for the New York Times a massacre of eighteen peasants by local troops in
Sonsonate province:
Ten military advisers are attached to the Sonsonate armed forces… . The
episode contains al the unchanging elements of the Salvadoran tragedy—
uncontrol ed military violence against civilians, the apparent ability of the
wealthy to procure official violence … and the presence of United States
military advisers, working with the Salvadoran military responsible for these
monstrous practices … after 30,000 unpunished murders by security and
military forces and over 10,000 "disappearances" of civilians in custody, the
root causes of the kil ings remain in place and the kil ing goes on.10
The purpose of its policy in Central America, said the U.S. government, was to protect the
country from the Soviet threat: a Soviet base in Nicaragua and a possible Soviet base in El
Salvador. This was not quite believable. Was the Soviet Union prepared to launch an
invasion of the United States from Central America? Was a nation that could not win a war
on its borders with Afghanistan going to send an army across the Atlantic Ocean to
Nicaragua? And what then? Would that army then march up through Honduras into
Guatemala, then through al of Mexico, into Texas, and then … ?
It was as absurd as the domino theory of the Vietnam War, in which the fal ing dominos of
